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Reclaiming "bare life"? Against Agamben on refugees

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 17:30 authored by Patricia Owens
Giorgio Agamben claims that refugees can be seen as the ultimate 'biopolitical' subjects: those who can be regulated and governed at the level of population in a permanent 'state of exception'. Refugees are reduced to 'bare life': humans as animals in nature without political freedom. Contra Agamben, it will be argued here that if refugee populations are not to face some inexorable trend toward a rule of 'exception', then it will not be through reclaiming 'bare life'. It will be wholly dependent on the ability to forge a public realm grounded on the appropriate distinction between nature and political artifice, between human life and the political world. This argument is made through contrasting Agamben's writing on refugees with Hannah Arendt's. What is at stake in the difference is illustrated through the example of refugee lip-sewing.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

International Relations

ISSN

0047-1178

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

4

Volume

23

Page range

567-582

Department affiliated with

  • International Relations Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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